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An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire
Arundhati Roy
Pages: 168ISBN: 0-89608-728-X
Format: cloth
Release Date: 2004-09-01
This book is also available in paper
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Arundhati Roy offers a lucid briefing on what the Bush administration really means by “compassionate conservativism” and “the war on terror.” In An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Roy skewers the hypocrisy of this more-democratic-than-thou clan and its cohorts, but more importantly she reminds us that we hold the power to counter tyranny—in all of its forms—in our own hands.
Focusing on the disastrous US occupation of Iraq, Roy urges us to recognize and apply this authority, urging US dockworkers to refuse to load materials heading for Iraq; reservists to reject their call-ups; and activists to organize boycotts of Halliburton. Roy also calls on people in other countries to resist working as “janitor-soldiers,” and leave the detritus of the US invasion untouched.
Roy’s Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire also offers sharp theoretical tools for understanding the New American Empire—a dangerous paradigm, Roy argues here, that is entirely distinct from the imperialism of the British or even the New World Order of George Bush the elder.
Finally, she examines how resistance movements build power, offering examples of nonviolent organizing in South Africa, India, and the United States. Deftly drawing the thread through ostensibly disconnected issues and arenas, Roy pays particular attention to the parallels between globalization in India, the devastation in Iraq, and the structural racism faced by many African Americans in the United States.
Breaking News
Arundhati Roy Named One of Top 100 Global ThinkersArundhati Roy has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2011 by Foreign Policy magazine. In her profile, the magazine says, "[Roy] has put her finger on the very real cost of India's economic boom. "We are watching a democracy turning on itself, trying to eat its own limbs," she warns. The Global Thinkers were honored at a reception in Washington, DC, on December 1 at the historic Meridian House.
Roy is the award-winning author of many books, including The God of Small Things, Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, Power Politics, and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. Her more recent book is Walking with the Comrades.
Read the profile here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,50#thinker94
Arundhati Roy
Click here to view Arundhati Roy's full Author PageArundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997. It sold over 6,000,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages. The recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom, she was also granted the 2006 Sahitya Akademi Award for her book The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but refused the award to protest Indian governmental actions. Her nonfiction books include An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (South End Press, 2004); War Talk (South End Press, 2003); Power Politics (South End Press, 2002); and The Cost of Living (Modern Library, 1998); and she discusses international politics further in The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Interviews with Arundhati Roy, with David Barsamian (South End Press, 2004). She is also the author of Field Notes for Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Haymarket Press) and Walking with the Comrades (Penguin). In 2011 Foreign Policy named her among 100 Top Global Thinkers. She lives in New Delhi, India.
Breaking News
Indian Government Authorizes the Arrest of Arundhati Roy on Charges of Sedition
from the LA Times, October 27, 2010
Arundhati Roy's dangerous Kashmiri cause
On Tuesday the Indian government took steps to authorize the arrest of author Arundhati Roy for "sedition" because of statements she has made about the territory of Kashmir. In response, Roy, a Booker Prize-winning novelist, says she has simply called for justice. "I said what millions of people here say every day," she said in a written statement e-mailed from Srinagar, Kashmir. Kashmir is the mountainous territory at the northern tip of India bordered... Read more here.